Kirkwood

I hadn't been on my skis for a year, so I was looking forward to a day trip to Kirkwood with Daniela, Lesley and Marcus. There was some rain in the Bay Area the past two days, which supposedly meant snow in the Sierras. Perfect for a Saturday on the slopes!

We met at Lesley's place at 5AM, packed our stuff into her XTerra and got on the road around 5:20. Traffic was pretty mellow, providing for a smooth ride with fun conversations ranging from '25 random things' to 'pre-marital sex in the bible'.

After a coffee break in Stockton we got to the resort around 9:30. The conditions were nice: 10" of fresh powder. It was a little foggy in the beginning, but it cleared out during the morning. To start with we did a couple of runs off chair 5 before heading over to the Backside for a couple of runs. Shortly after noon Lesley and Marcus took a lunch break, while Dan and I decided that we were having too much fun to stop even for a short time. So we munched on some energy bars while on the lifts.

The weather had cleared enough to hit the powder lines through the trees. It was just amazing! i had forgotten how much fun skiing is! I was also surprised how well I was dealing with knee deep powder...

After we met up with the other two guys we hit the bowls off of chair 6 and did a few runs over there. By that time I knew I would have a hard time getting my smile off my face in the evening.

Another couple of runs my legs were fried, and Lesley was the only one of our group who still wanted to keep going, but we all settled for some hot chocolate before heading back to the car and back to the Bay Area.

Although I was super tired when I got home at 8:30PM I was not able to sleep... in my mind I was still in the mountains, carving turns between rocks and trees, and making plans for going back soon! It was well past midnight before I finally fell asleep.